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Does General Education Meet the Needs of Today’s Students

In my long academic administration career, I was rarely warned against treading into an area of potential conflict.  But several times at different institutions, my “boss” indicated that General Education was not an area I could profitably address because it could be political dynamite.  I heeded the advice and held my tongue.  But as I watch my grandchildren prepare to go to college and I read the degree requirements of their prospective institutions, I am as perplexed as ever about the beloved Gen Ed requirements.  The unrest is even more acute today as the additional “hot potato” of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has been added to the requirements at some universities. Are the concepts enshrined in Gen Ed so profound that everyone needs to understand them?   In our “What do I need to get a job?” era, should Gen Ed still be required?  In addition, does the current methodology of teaching these ideas through required courses or courses in required disciplines meet the outcome our students need?
 
At the beginning of my own days as a university student I was given a list of the university’s Gen Ed requirements.  The list named the courses to be taken to meet those requirements and a number of credits in each area that was needed.  And the advising was very essentially non-existent.  (I suspect this is the experience of most current provosts.) There was no rationale for the  specific courses and no indication how choosing any specific course would help me develop as a biology major.  There was no discussion about my career goals and, importantly, how choosing an inappropriate course might delay graduation because major program requirements might require a different course from the long list.  I am sure that advising is better today that it was in 1966, but as an interested grandparent, I cannot see that the student experience has changed much.  At best I am seeing a list of university core requirements and a list of specific program major requirements listed separately, but not the context that might explain why they were chosen, which courses aid achievement of desired careers, and which are safe backups, in case I chose to change my major from biology to business or vice versa.
 
I think the conundrum occurs because requirements are chosen without a specific career in mind.  In most cases the Gen Ed requirements were decided on by the university under direction of the faculty and with the consent of the administration.  The goal was, I believe, to give students insight into the breadth of universal knowledge as understood by the institution’s faculty, to make sure university graduates have a taste for different areas of possible interest and, perhaps, to bring students up to some minimal level of knowledge so that employers knew what to expect from university graduates.
 
The diversity of institutions and the diversity of faculty within their institutions means that the student experience has huge variation.  For example, at a university that stresses engineering, the requirements might include quantitative reasoning while at a liberal arts university they might include courses on intercultural perspectives.  I interpret this as meaning that general education is not something that can be generalized.  Professional accreditation requirements might also skew the choices a student might have .  In addition, more than one state appears to set requirements.  In Arkansas, Appendix C, Section 1 of the Division of Higher Education’s Procedures for Establishing Programs sets some requirements.  In Missouri, Statute 170.011 requires some knowledge of Missouri be included in the academic program.  In some states, such as Michigan, the requirements for state institutions to be able to accept transfer students means Gen Ed has been somewhat standardized through the Michigan Transfer Agreement.  Recent proposed legislative bills in Florida suggest the exclusion of some gender and diversity topics from Gen Ed will be made mandatory.  These decisions external to the university impede the individual institutions from making their degree requirements unique. 
 
But what happens to the student who does not follow the “traditional” path of tertiary education by attending a single institution for four to six years?  Does a student path that starts in a community college, where generality is more generally the rule, mean that the student who transfers is really at a disadvantage in acquiring the engineering or the history degree? The challenge of transferability may impact students so that for a student intent on a technical degree, the community college history course that discusses the social impacts of war to the exclusion of the technological aspects may not be accepted as part of the program at the school into which the student transfers.
 
What are the other unintended consequences of Gen Ed?  Does it impact student retention or graduation?  How many students have been put off by the mathematics requirement or the social sciences requirement?  At some institutions it is suggested that Gen Ed requirements be completed in the first two years (especially if the goal is transfer).  But a future engineer wants to do some engineering!  Many engineering programs now make sure there is a freshman engineering course, which may delay the taking of a Gen Ed course until much later in the student’s life at the institution.  Is so much emphasis on the “general” impacting the efforts toward “education” that the student decides to leave college and take a job that will never develop into a career?  Should the inability to pass a laboratory science course mean that the world loses a wonderfully creative graphic artist?
 
With all these questions, I think that now is the time to have a national conversation, perhaps hosted by ACAO or ACE, on the entire question of general education.  Perhaps Gen Ed should be eliminated as antiquated.  Perhaps graduation requirements should all be individualized.  Or perhaps providing a rationale for why all students of any age should have a general education will help us substantiate the need for higher education for all.
Michael A. Gealt is Professor Emeritus and former Executive Vice President / Provost at Central Michigan University where he served for six years prior to his retirement in 2020.  He previously served as Dean of Engineering, Mathematics and Science (and briefly Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs) at Purdue University Calumet (now Northwest) and as Dean of the College of Science at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

Panel Discussion Explores the Impact of ChatGPT on Higher Education

On 21 February 2023, ACAO hosted a panel discussion on Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) and its potential uses (or abuses) in higher education. The goal of the panel was twofold: (1) to introduce provosts and other attendees to ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI) and similar AI language models and technologies; and (2) to discuss the opportunities and challenges of this new technology on our working, teaching, and learning environments.

Three speakers addressed attendees. First, Dr. Jing Peng from Montclair State University provided a high-level presentation on AI chatbot technology and its evolution over time. Dr. Peng’s presentation highlighted the fact that this technology is not “new,” per se, with roots that extend back decades – but its development is accelerating exponentially as it becomes “smarter” given the vast amount of data that are now available for its refinement and evolution.

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The Faculty-CAO Relationship: Making it Work

Regardless of how long you served as an instructional faculty member, as the institution’s Chief Academic Officer, you are no longer part of that club. You still work with and among faculty but make no mistake: You don’t have the same relationships that you previously did. You may have served as a department head or dean and think you are used to changing interactions with faculty, but the CAO role holds a specific set of foibles.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have a collegial association with your faculty; that mutual respect and commitment is more important than ever. But your interactions, communications and overall association is different and more delicate. Keep these three things in mind as you consider your own connections with faculty.

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Internal Leadership Training for Faculty and Academic Administrators Reaps Big Rewards

It is both expensive and time-consuming on many levels to launch a national search for every academic leadership position on campus.  Sometimes, of course, a national search is warranted for a Dean or for a Provost, but for other positions, such as department chairs, program directors, assistant and associate deans and associate/provosts, having a trained and ready “back bench” may be the best solution to maintain desired progress and efficiencies.  Admittedly, there are reasons to desire external candidates when changes and fresh perspectives are desired, but that is not always the case.  More often than not, leadership laments that there are no internal candidates ready to move up.

When colleges and universities want to retain their best, most creative, ambitious, and competent faculty and academic administrators, it is important for these people to sense a career path if they stay at the institution, and it is important to invest in their professional development so that they feel valued. With these two complementary goals in mind, the Touro College Academy of Leadership and Management (TCALM) was implemented five years ago in 2018.

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Practical Alternatives to Tenure: Lessons Learned for Best Practice

As chief academic officers, we are all familiar with the real and perceived concerns about traditional tenure-track faculty appointments. At many of our institutions, these concerns are enhanced by constraints in funding and tenure quotas that limit our ability to make tenure-track appointments. Statistics show the percentage of tenured and tenure-track appointments has declined across all sectors of higher education in recent years. In fact, the American Association of University Professors reports that the actual number of full-time, non-tenure-track faculty hired in 2016 exceeded the number of tenure-track faculty.

While not advocating for or against this practice, we recognize that provosts may need to make non-tenure-track (NTT) appointments to address enrollment trends and to recruit specialized faculty, particularly in new degree programs. Making such appointments may be critical to your success in ensuring the academic quality of your programs.

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Transition to the New Academic Normal

It is now over two years since the COVID-19 pandemic first significantly affected the functions of higher education and the consequences of the impact cannot be under-estimated.  Many effects were budgetary, including negative enrollment growth, but probably most important to academic affairs in the long run was the changes implemented in the way we do our business as faculty and academic administration.  The pandemic resulted in rapid change, but as several authors have noted, primarily the pandemic was speeding up changes in education that were already in progress[1].  In 2020 we went from traditional “university speed” to Star Wars hyper-drive speed, but along the path we had already chosen.
 

The challenges we currently face getting back to a “normal” (thanks to vaccines and other immunity enhancers), are working with student impacts (including the challenges of new students whose instruction while in high school or community college was negatively impacted) and finding the technology mix that is appropriate.  We seem to be in a continuous transition state.  While in 2020, we were mainly responding without much time for reflection, we now need to perform assessments of the changes we made.  We need to assure that modifications that were improvements are not.  It is only through this assessment that our picture of the academy of the future will be realized.

Therefore, we will need to look at changes that were made in:

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Factors CAOs Consider to Remain in Their Positions

In June 2022, ACAO partnered with the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to study the longevity of Provosts in their positions. The resulting study led to a research paper.

Factors Chief Academic Officers Consider in Deciding Whether to Remain in Their Positions

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